One year anniversary of Postojna’s batch of ‘baby dragons’

It has been a year since the moment that astonished and thrilled Postojna Cave, Slovenia and the world. On Saturday, 30th January 2016, the first olm egg was noticed on the glass of Postojna Cave's aquarium. Over the following 8 weeks, the mother olm laid 64 eggs, from which 22 eggs developed into larvae and 21 young have been growing and developing over the past year. Today, they are about 6 cm long.

“The olm juveniles won’t be released into their natural environment, since they would most likely not survive it,” commented the experts at Postojna cave. Since the first egg, discovered in January 2016, they have been monitoring their development with an infrared camera, which has already recorded 17,500 hours of video. The material will become a matter for professional literature, because the life cycle of the ‘human fish’ is not very well known. The goal of the biologists at Postojna Cave is to maintain a cave environment in which the human fish can survive. This includes clean and safe water and a clean environment. "All their food is specially grown and “cultivated” to avoid any parasites or unwanted effects on the vulnerable baby olms,” explained biologist Saso Weldt. At January’s press conference at Postojna Cave, the management introduced its successful statistics - almost €21 million of revenue generated more than €5 million of profit, which is 40% more than the previous year. “I can tell you a secret why this is happening - if you take good care of the cave, the cave returns the favour," said the CEO of Postojna Cave, Marjan Batagelj.

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